A day like any other

Odd how an official publication day really doesn't feel like much of anything at all.

Unless you're Stephen Colbert -- with whom I happen to share a pub date this year.

Just makes you realize what fame is -- and isn't....

The monster and I, we'll survive, though.

Takes guts

It could be a brilliant strategy, or a massive debacle. Exactly in parallel with Mel Brooks's Broadway Young Frankenstein, a newly composed off-Broadway musical of our favorite monster's tale is opening off-Broadway. Not too many hints come through the Playbill listing of the show, which opens tomorrow. Even cast photos look bland, but stay tuned.

Every season, it seems, has its monsters. Few have true staying power but we clamor, still, for more.

Blushing with pride

Michael Sims has honored me and the monster with a great review in the Sunday LA Times.

Trying to keep from grinning... for instance, he writes: “Her text grows out of such a fertile ground of scholarly research that any chapter might blossom into another volume. Thus it's all the more remarkable that this book is so much fun.”

And: “Moving gracefully from novel to film to metaphor, she spends little time theorizing. Her ‘cultural history’ is so lively that at first you may decide it lacks scholarly ballast and slant. Soon, however, one sees that the author's admirable restraint serves to advance and streamline the text. In the last chapters, while addressing how academic criticism opened the door to Frankenstein, Hitchcock’s own work confirms the value of cultural history as a discipline.”

Wow.

Let no lips touch this cup

Who knew? Well, perhaps the Chinese manufacturers. Leave it to the monster to pop up amid the too-much-lead-in-the-toys debacle.

If you’re finding fewer green-skinned, scar-faced drinking cups about this Halloween season, it's because 63,000 plastic Frankenstein cups on sale from Dollar General were just recalled, according to reports from northern Ohio, where the items were found. The paint on them tested at—you guessed it—dangerously high lead levels, 65 times the amount allowed by federal standards.

What do you bet it's an unflattering image as well? Somehow those cheap imitations just don’t let the inner gentleman show through in the beast.

Canine possibilities

Ryan Bell in an online animation trade mag whispers that we might be in store for a monstrous Tim Burton treat, ready to line up with Edward Scissorshand and Nightmare Before Christmas as yet another ode to the monster.

According to Bell, Burton may be making an animated version of his great 1984 Disney short, Frankenweenie. Remember the one, with Shelley Duval as the google-eyed mother and the stitched-up dog whose life was made complete in the end when he met the poodle, her hair zinged up like the Bride’s?

I didn't get enough space (or enough photo budget money) to give Frankenweenie its due in my book. It’s worth a watch by any true monster afficionado.

The Fingers Quiver

We're in the countdown mode for my book, Frankenstein: A Cultural History, official pub date October 9.

I’ve received the advance copy, held the baby in my hand.

I’ve got a week’s worth of book signings lined up in Virginia and North Carolina—will be posting details on my website.

And the first press on the book has just come out. Read Jennifer Hillner's fun interview of me and my monster in the October Wired.

Birthday Cake

Everybody's talking about how long Young Frankenstein's ... er ... show play is. But some people just know how to write.

I love the way Gavin Borchert of the Seattle Weekly dot-com rounds up his easygoing comments on the show:

“Even the verbatim borrowings from the film seem less like calculated easy laughs than like, say, your mom cooking your favorite meal for your birthday,” writes Borchert.

You gotta love it.